the days when she didn't feel
like smiling. Or talking. Or moving. It had started out badly when she
opened her eyes and found herself staring at a familiar blue ceiling.
"I don't know," she said irritably. "I tell you, I simply don't know
what happens. I'll start to answer someone and the words will be right
on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken, then I'll say something
altogether different. Or I'll start to cross the street and, for no
reason at all, be unable to even step off the curb...."

"For no reason at all?" Dr. Andrews asked. "Are you sure you aren't
withholding something you ought to tell me?"

She shifted a little, suddenly uncomfortable ... and then she was
fully awake and the ceiling was ivory, not blue. She stared at it for
a long moment, completely disoriented, before she realized that she
was in her own bed, not on Dr. Andrews' brown leather couch, and that
the conversation had been another of the interminable imaginary
dialogues she found herself carrying on with the psychiatrist, day and
night, awake and asleep.

"Get out of my dreams," she ordered crossly, summoning up a quick
mental picture of Dr. Andrews' expressive face, level gray eyes, and
silvering temples, the better to banish him from her thoughts. She was
immediately sorry she had done so, for the image remained fixed in her
mind; she could almost feel his eyes as she heard his voice ask again,
"For no reason at all, Lucilla?"

* * * * *

The weatherman had promised a scorcher, and the heat that already lay
like a blanket over the room made it seem probable the promise would
be fulfilled. She moved listlessly, showering patting herself dry,
lingering over the choice of a dress until her mother called urgently
from the kitchen.

She was long minutes behind schedule when she left the house. Usually
she rather enjoyed easing her small car into the stream of automobiles
pouring down Sepulveda toward the San Diego Freeway, jockeying for
position, shifting expertly from one lane to another to take advantage
of every break in the traffic. This morning she felt only angry
impatience; she choked back on the irritated impulse to drive directly
into the side of a car that cut across in front of her, held her horn
button down furiously when a slow-starting truck hesitated
fractionally after the light turned green.

When she finally edged her Renault up on the "on" ramp and the freeway
stretched straight and